Tossing Gold

Near Cripple Creek, CO gold and tellurium occur mixed as tellurite ore. The refining methods in early mining camps could not separate the two elements and so the ore was tossed into piles with the rest of the garbage. A rookie miner grabbed some of this tossed ore thinking it was coal into his stove to keep him warm in the mountains. It didn’t work well but it was cheap so he went through a lot of it mixed with coal dust and other garbage he could scrounge. Jumping ahead of me you probably know what happened. Eventually he had to get the ashes from his stove and in the bottom he found purified gold sitting in little beads mixed in his ashes. He became a very wealthy rookie miner.

On April 21, 2006 the news told us that a man was caught trying to sell his daughter. She was five years old and from a previous marriage where her mother didn’t want her so left her with her father. The father took her and a few years later tried to sell her for $7000. When the father was asked what he was thinking he simply stated that he needed the money for “home improvements.”

Children are tellurite ore. They are more precious than you can imagine yet often end up on the garbage heap for various reasons. Sometimes we simply are too lazy to work at separating the gold from the tellurium. Sometimes we just don’t see the gold at all and sell them for whatever we can get for them. Sometimes we fear discipline and putting our ore through the fire to smelt out the garbage and form something golden pure.

I don’t know what that father was thinking but he needs a smack on the side of the head if not more just to get his mind straight. When you look at your children and/or the children of others look at them a gold waiting to be found and burst into the open. Treat them that preciously and we will have a much richer society as a result.

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